DEAR SOCIAL MEDIA MEMBERS, ARE YOU ALLOWED TO SEE THIS POST NOW?

Guys, are you able to see this post of mine? About 6 hours ago, my Social Media began to fail and the reason is that Museveni’s ‘anti-gossiping tax’ regime came into effect at midnight of July 1, 2018?

This news that made us broke today broke on April 1, 2018 and we brushed it off as April’s Fools Day gaffe, not knowing it would be this frank prank that would cost us (taxpayers) up to $400 million dollars this year to fund ‘the damages of gossiping’, according to President Museveni.😜

The tragedy is that I have to wake up and walk to a nearby mobile money service centre to load and pay ‘rent’ for the next 24 hours in case I do not have the mandatory 200 Uganda shillings (about 5 cents in US dollars) on my phone account.

It is like the President of Uganda is hitting back on his critics, but mindless of mama selling her banana through mobile phone out there.

“However, olugambo on social media (opinions, prejudices, insults, friendly chats) and advertisements by Google and I do not know who else must pay tax because we need resources to cope with the consequences of their lugambo,” Mr Museveni wrote.

Let’s pray against the fact that the poor may pay on behalf of the rich; and that this vengefully punitive tax policy is not copied and pasted from the other side of the border where President Museveni is a godfather. I just heard from a from through ”lugambo’ that my home state (Jonglei) has introduced a homestead tax (or hut tax) to fund the government budget. So help my mother, God!

Just imagine the news of taxing this article on my blog, The Eased Africa I Want, and getting money to fund your fictitiously ambitious budget! What a glad tidings this is in Juba! God forbid…for the sake of the already starving populace there!

When I woke up today at 5.00AM and tried to check on the headlines on Google and my various Social Media groupings, including BBC and VOA FMs online, access was denied. I had not pay the ‘Lugambo Tax’! And this requires me to go to a nearby supermarket to load Mobile money and pay the daily Whatsapp tax, else I would not access my air ticket sent through WhatsApp.

As if this is not enough, the Mobile Money on the same transaction is also taxed with 1% from my money, plus the VAT on airyairand that when buying a smartphone!

By the way, I am not reacting alone. The voiceless out there are choking in silence. Those with this smartphone privilege have one of them saying this on Daily Monitor:

Livingstone Ssewanyana, Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) executive director: “Widening the tax base is not bad but government needs to be mindful of access to information. What the President is proposing, taxing people spreading lugambo, is an attempt to undermine individual freedoms. The tax will not only hurt those who criticise government, but even innocent people. That tax aims to exploit local people. It’s diversionary, deceptive and burdensome to the people. People are already paying VAT, PAYE, Property Tax and are complaining. So it’s not reasonable to continue to overburden the tax payer with a tax on social media. Government collects a lot of money already, what it needs to deal with is corruption.”

And this is what one statesman said in one of his official statements decades ago in England.

“I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Winston S. Churchill

However, I argue that Museveni’s is not a taxation but revenge drive on the Lugambos. After Social Media, the president is shifting his war to tarmac roads, which he fears can bring the gossips and thieves running to Kampala very fast. This, I call ‘tarmacophobia’.

“If we make tarmac here; it is for the public, that road is for everybody; the thief who is going to steal at night, the witch-doctor who is going to do witchcraft at night, the rumour monger who is going to Kampala to tell lies. They will all move very fast on the tarmac,” the president said in his campaign speech for an MP and Mayor of Apac District, just few days after slamming social media with tax.

YOU’RE WELL? COME!

Dear Ready Reader, Since it is my belief that a good reader is a good leader, I cordially welcome and encourage you to explore my literal mind and exploit my literary mine in this poetic wordware. I hope you are not that pessimistic critic – not a somber leader but a sober reader – who is ever ready to give me their unique critiques on my Pennique techniques; just as my previous readers had with me as their text collector (or corrector and connector) of news, views, interviews, reviews, overviews, previews, purviews, and all the free views expressed in the process of my rioting by writing when my nascent nation is trudging through her era of error. To be Pennically jealous and Penniquely zealous, just as I would not want Juba defined and designed with Sheik Zubeir’s architecture, I would not want my pages pasted and passages plastered with Shakespeare’s literature; and neither would I want my messages massaged with Achebe’s achievers flavours, nor my torturous tales tailored with Tutuola's tutorials. Yet again, if this is not understandable – lo, we go!— (From Preface to my poetry book (manuscript, 'The Black Christs of Africa'

Jon Pen

CALLOUS CALLOUT? Well, here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays this blog and 'The Black Christs of Africa'— the book and its sequels. Lo we go…! (From Preface to 'The Black Christs of Africa' (manuscript)

Pennavatar

However, what I found out during my six years of a hide-and-seek game with a 'real publisher of books' was but a real publisher of names; of names of those who have already published books. Since I did not have any name, yet, to be published and sold, I just landed on an e-printer and a printer handy, to me, the real publisher of words. In the truest sense of these words, this (Master Text Collector Ltd.) is the real publisher of books; one who looks at the book of a writer and not the writer of a book. Therefore, if I were the president of a ‘Republic of Literatia’, I would make that a decree to publish not the literary pedigree but the literary degree in a very mannered script of every manuscript. Lo, we go…!

Textleak

ABOUTLEAKS:
Of my style as from my works of poetry:

"Well, there is one fact I have to admit from their cynicism, but omit from my Pennicism and commit to our criticism as we trudge along in this world of invention. The fact is, if my work is unconventional, then it is because I did not attend that Literary Convention hosted by patrons and matrons of an ‘Art Convent’– in case of any – during those days when God created the World by the Word in the ‘Universe of Artitecture’. So spare me this deliberate circumvention for my own literary convention conducted in a series of serious conferences only within the circumference of my upper room, call it, Head Hall. Lo, we go…!
So here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays, The Black Christs of Africa— this book and its sequels. Lo we go…! "